Black Indigeneity and Anti-Colonial Rebellion in Eugene O’Neill’s The Emperor Jones
In The Emperor Jones, a rebellion orchestrated by the “Native Chief,” Lem, dramatizes Eugene O’Neill’s Indigenocentric reimagining of the US occupation of Haiti. O’Neill honoured his primary source, James Weldon Johnson’s Self-Determining Haiti, by creating a Black Indigenous leader who orchestrates the overthrow of an invader from the United States. Taking Lem seriously corrects a critical tradition preoccupied with the outsized “emperor,” Brutus Jones, and inattentive to Indigenous Americans in the play.
2015 ◽
Vol 2
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2019 ◽